Today.  Man, it sure is a good thing I took that leave of absence.  It started, officially, the Tuesday before Christmas.  Spent the week after Christmas in Michigan with the GF’s family.  It was fantastic.  A week in God’s country, and without that cursed Blackberry.  Then I actually went in to the office every day last week.  Just short days, on my terms, to finish up some stuff.  So here I am, coming to the close of my first real day of being absent, or leaving, or whatever.  I haven’t left the house.  To be fair, it’s pretty nasty out there.  It’s been snowing all day and we’re finally getting those big beautiful flakes that sort of resemble the ones we northern kids cut out of typing paper in grade school.  All we have been getting up until now are flakes that could more accurately be described as dots.  So the pine tree in the back yard is looking stately and winterish, boughs sagging in the white stuff.  I know that because I wasn’t entirely honest, I’ve been out on the back deck for a couple of smokes, so I suppose I have actually left the house – sort of.

I slept in this morning, it was nice.  Then I had some breakfast and watched the bonus features on The Blues Brothers so we can finally send it back to Netflix.  That movie is phenomenal.  I‘ve had laundry in most of the day, so that feels good.  It’s one of “my jobs” in the division of labor here at our place.  Other than that though, I’ve pretty much been sitting here, at my computer.  I play guitar until my fingers hurt, then I cruise the interweb.  Try to figure our how to afford the camera I want to bring with me.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

The whole idea was to take the month of January off.  Have a vacation, relax, prepare for deployment.  We leave for Mexico on Saturday so there’s the vacation part.  I’m a pretty relaxed kinda guy, so that’s not hard.  It’s the “preparing for deployment” that gets more difficult.  How exactly is one supposed to do that?  The Army has a manual for everything, but there doesn’t seem to be a list of instructions for packing up and leaving for a year.  Sure, there’s the usual stuff.  Make a will.  Get a power of attorney set up.  Be careful with your POA so they don’t spend all your money and rack up debt in your name while you’re gone.  That really does happen.  Make a list of all your passwords and account numbers so someone can take care of your stuff.  Figure out what to do with the car.  “Get your affairs in order.”

What it really ends up being is this:  try to have lunch/dinner/drinks with everyone you know.  Try not to count “lasts.”  For example, don’t think about the fact that you won’t have a Michigan summer for awhile.  Don’t curse the snow because it makes the roads nasty.  Don’t count the number of nights left to sleep in your own bed.  Try to have fun in Mexico even though it means you won’t be around much longer.  Log time with the younger siblings.

It’s tricky.  “Leave of absence” sounds so formal, like I’ve done something wrong.  That’s what happens to cops who shoot people on duty.  Maybe I should do as my high school English teacher told us and “subvert the dominant paradigm.’  OK, I’m “going on sabbatical” to study Arab culture and language for a year.  It’ll be great…